Texas students get one-year break from tests' effect on grades

Texas high school freshmen and their parents no longer have to worry about new state exams affecting students' grades - at least not this year.

State Education Commissioner Robert Scott agreed Friday to a one-year delay on enforcing a controversial law requiring that students' scores on the new standardized tests count toward 15 percent of their course grades.

Scott's decision came after lawmakers from both parties wrote him this week urging he postpone the grade rule they had mandated. An appointee of Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Scott said he also consulted with the governor's office before granting the delay.

Superintendents and parents had protested in recent months that the exam scores could hurt students' grade-point averages and their chances of getting into top colleges.

Criticizing such complaints as unfounded paranoia, the Texas Association of Business argued that the grade rule was important to ensure students took the tests seriously - as their scores are supposed to shed light on their preparedness for college.

"Changes like this need to go slowly," said Milli Bush, whose daughter is a freshman at Carnegie Vanguard, a high school for gifted students. "Even though I don't anticipate it affecting my daughter negatively, I could see how it could affect other children negatively."

Scott already had said schools would get a break from receiving accountability ratings based on the new exams this year. In their letters, lawmakers said Scott had the power to grant students a similar reprieve to adjust to the harder exams, called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.

This year's ninth-graders, the first to take the new tests, are not off the hook entirely. They still have to pass the exams to graduate. Over their high school career, they will have to earn a passing average on 12 end-of-course exams in English, math, science and social studies.

Under the state's old testing system, high school students had to pass four exams to graduate, and the scores did not count toward their grades.

"I remain committed to rigorous public school accountability," Scott said in a statement Friday. "The new assessment system will be better for students and educators, and will better ensure Texas students are ready for postsecondary success."

Greg Smith, superintendent of the Clear Creek Independent School District, said the state's decision to delay the grade rule came "better late than never," as students are set to take the exams this spring.

"This has been by far the worst transition of any state standardized test that I've ever seen," Smith said.

Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier said the delay will give districts another year to plan but he's more concerned about the state's refusal to spell out details on implementing the grade rule. For example, the state has left it up to districts to decide how to translate the exam scores into grades.

"I still favor a statewide implementation (of the law) because our students are going to be competing with students from other districts for slots from colleges," Grier said.